The CEAH team began by identifying databases of initiatives kept by national sources where possible. If no databases were readily available in a given Member State, information was collected on initiatives from local organisations such as federations of energy communities or civil society organisations, and other research initiatives. Duplicates, anonymous entries, and discontinued initiatives were removed from source lists and not considered for the CEAH map. The same applies for initiatives with very limited data available.
For this first publication of the map, a validity check was conducted to see if the initiatives fit within the EU legal definitions for energy communities. This is without prejudice to national datasets or national classifications. Where a Member State had less than 150 initiatives, the CEAH team was able to conduct a validity check on each individual initiative (within the constraints of available data). When a database had >150 initiatives, the CEAH team extracted a sample (of around 5%) and performed a check on those individual initiatives. Where the sample was compatible with the EU definitions, the remaining initiatives were also accepted as compatible.
For the verification process, the CEAH team started from a positive assumption that an entry is an energy community, unless available information was found to contradict this. In other words, unless information was found that strongly indicated lack of compliance with the criteria, the initiative was accepted. This map is a non-exhaustive list of RECs and CECs according to the EU definitions, future updates will include other types of citizen energy initiatives around the EU. Users of the map are invited to send any missing or incomplete information to the CEAH team at ceahinfo
ricardo [dot] com (ceahinfo[at]ricardo[dot]com).